IBM's BlueGene/L: world's fastest supercomputer, 3 years running

The TOP500 supercomputing list was just announced and IBM's BlueGene/L system has kept its crown. In fact, IBM's and the Department of Energy's co-developed monster at Lawrence Livermore has occupied the number 1 position since 2004. Of course, an upgrade was required boost the Linpack benchmark to 478.2 TFlop/s from the 280.6TFlop/s the machine was clocking just 6 months ago. The top 10 swath is dominated by the US, Sweden, and Germany with India breaking into the list for the first time at the number 4 position with its HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c system measuring 102.8TFlop/s.

[Via Impress]

[huggles @ Nov 13th 2007 7:30AM]

What about W.O.P.R?

[Jesus Christ @ Nov 13th 2007 7:32AM]

But can it play Doom?

[huggles @ Nov 13th 2007 7:34AM]

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

[stitifier @ Nov 13th 2007 7:36AM]

See, even I thought about that briefly, but instantly berated myself for even considering posting something based on a tired, worn out meme. Now I'm berating YOU.

Please, no more Doom or overlords or blenders for a while. I'm not asking; I'm begging.

[spyyder @ Nov 13th 2007 8:08AM]

@stitifier

since when were you the cliche police, get off your high horse.

[ark_v2 @ Nov 13th 2007 9:00AM]

Crysis you n00b, Crysis.

[Geir E @ Nov 13th 2007 10:08AM]

"stitifier @ Nov 13th 2007 7:36AM
..cut..
Please, no more Doom or overlords or blenders for a while. I'm not asking; I'm begging."
then
"spyyder @ Nov 13th 2007 8:08AM

since when were you the cliche police, get off your high horse."

Here is a guy begging someone to stop using cliches, and you are refering to him as police?

I must ask, where are you from that have police that begs for anything?

[Oracle @ Nov 13th 2007 10:31AM]

LOL @spyyder

JC: Booorrrrinnnnggg

[climber1984 @ Nov 13th 2007 10:50AM]

But imagine a beowolf cluster of those!

[Brian @ Nov 13th 2007 7:34AM]

obligatory "but, can it run Doom?"

[Jon @ Nov 13th 2007 7:48AM]

Shut up.

[MeDammit @ Nov 13th 2007 6:28PM]

You're gay.

[Jagannath A @ Nov 13th 2007 7:49AM]

and for clearing your doubts...

yes It will run all the copies of doom that are available on earth at the same time

and if you think you are a team of uber CS pros.. it will even play CS with your team.. its each row is a player

[Adrian Williams @ Nov 13th 2007 7:53AM]

I wonder how hot that room gets without AC

[Jonas @ Nov 13th 2007 8:02AM]

Nice computer. But what does it do?

[Dennis @ Nov 13th 2007 8:08AM]

its secretly coming up with its elaborate plan for world domination

[Jonas @ Nov 13th 2007 8:54AM]

Ha! Your right! They say its suppose to calculate inter-ballistic-last-second-emergency-resort-to-last-plan scenario. Some people even speculate that in a last effort to execute a plan it plays pac-man. The 70s version.

[tylersmyler @ Nov 13th 2007 8:59AM]

I'm pretty certain they would use it to predict the complicated weather patterns our world has to offer. My question is.. will the weather man finally be right this time?

[mattydread @ Nov 13th 2007 9:21AM]

@Dennis -

World domination? This is IBM, not Google. :p

[Matthew @ Nov 13th 2007 10:00AM]

It's solving Tic-Tac-Toe.

[loci @ Nov 13th 2007 8:12AM]

but does it have any original jokes?

[Jagannath A @ Nov 13th 2007 8:46AM]

in a future upgrade

[Dom @ Nov 13th 2007 8:31AM]

Now then... if a PS3 can churn out 2 TFLOPS, could you beat this supercomputer simply by linking about 250 PS3s together?

[Satish @ Nov 13th 2007 12:12PM]

dude its called TFlop (TeraFlop)..sure may be a PSP in 2012...not now..

[Wwhat @ Nov 13th 2007 4:15PM]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Roadrunner
Seems IBM is using the CELL CPU for supercomputers in the future.
Of course these are so called 'full' versions and not the PS3 ones, but still.

[qtip @ Nov 13th 2007 8:50AM]

Ok, now we know what Crytek was using to make those cool Crysis videos with maxed settings.

[thermowar @ Nov 13th 2007 8:56AM]

Just wait for the Intel mimzy.

[fudgebutter @ Nov 13th 2007 9:09AM]

I too was curious what this is used for. From the computer's site (which I found through the linked article):
Located in the Terascale Simulation Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, BlueGene/L is used by scientists at Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories. The 360-teraFLOPS machine handles many challenging scientific simulations, including ab initio molecular dynamics; three-dimensional (3D) dislocation dynamics; and turbulence, shock, and instability phenomena in hydrodynamics. It is also a computational science research machine for evaluating advanced computer architectures.

[johnzilla @ Nov 13th 2007 1:05PM]

"ab initio molecular dynamics; three-dimensional (3D) dislocation dynamics; and turbulence, shock, and instability phenomena in hydrodynamics"

In short, it figures out what happens when nuclear weapons explode or tsunamis and earthquakes hit.

[Paul Gemperlein @ Nov 15th 2007 5:54PM]

Boring. Make it calculate the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything.

[Andir3.0 @ Nov 13th 2007 7:43PM]

I'll save you a few years of computation... 42, now find the question.

[Richard @ Nov 13th 2007 9:33AM]

Will it play Smith-Waterman?

[Mark @ Nov 13th 2007 9:55AM]

But is it dual core?

[ermmm @ Nov 13th 2007 10:27AM]

it's 131072 x core

[ghostninjakyle @ Nov 13th 2007 10:34AM]

"it's 131072 x core"

That's it?

[Andir3.0 @ Nov 13th 2007 7:44PM]

They were going to add more cores, but the developers were having a hard time with it and production costs were going up.

[gimpbully @ Nov 15th 2007 5:27PM]

It's single core, dual processor/node

[finndo @ Nov 13th 2007 10:27AM]

so, as was asked before, what does it do? I mean did they use it to decode the human genome? or was it busy counting the number of holes in the ceiling tile? does it have its own integrated fully functional AI? is it voice activated, or do you still need a keyboard and a mouse? what about video output? does it use a VGA out or DVI? what about HDMI? can it support multiple (or even 2) monitors? Can it tell me how many drops of water are in the Chesapeake bay? (I got that one wrong on my high school physics test) what happens if someone flips the circuit breaker? does it require its own nuclear power plant? How many processors does it have? What class processors are they? How much ram does it have, how much ram does it use regularly? Are there any terminals to access it? how much of our precious natural resources is it taking up trying to keep the stupid machine turned on? If a deer farts in the woods, does this thing know about it? does it work on a wireless network? are they using a token ring network to connect them? what about gigabit Ethernet, or does it use terabit Ethernet? fiber, twisted pair, or coax? they sure know how to tell you absolutely nothing about something in a news article.

[Wolfticket @ Nov 13th 2007 10:54AM]

Its spends all it's time working out what the question is.

[Coyote @ Nov 13th 2007 11:02AM]

"so, as was asked before, what does it do? I mean did they use it to decode the human genome? or was it busy counting the number of holes in the ceiling tile?" -- it does advanced simulation thingies
https://asc.llnl.gov/computing_resources/bluegenel/simulations.html

"does it have its own integrated fully functional AI?" -- Umm. no it runs "Operating System CNK/SLES 9" some one gets to tell you what that is.

http://www.top500.org/system/8968

"is it voice activated, or do you still need a keyboard and a mouse? what about video output? does it use a VGA out or DVI? what about HDMI? can it support multiple (or even 2) monitors?" -- its accessible via ssh

https://asc.llnl.gov/computing_resources/bluegenel/basics/

"Can it tell me how many drops of water are in the Chesapeake bay?" -- if you ask nicely

"what happens if someone flips the circuit breaker?" -- my guess is it would turn off


"does it require its own nuclear power plant?" -- it draws 1.5 megawatts

https://asc.llnl.gov/computing_resources/bluegenel/configuration.html

"How many processors does it have?" -- 131072

http://www.top500.org/system/8968 65,536 dual-processor compute nodes Times 2

"What class processors are they?" -- Umm. PowerPC 440 700 MHz (2.8 GFlops)

http://www.top500.org/system/8968

"How much ram does it have, ... " -- 73728 GB

http://www.top500.org/system/8968

"how much ram does it use regularly?" -- depends on the program.

"Are there any terminals to access it?" -- its accessible via ssh

https://asc.llnl.gov/computing_resources/bluegenel/basics/

"how much of our precious natural resources is it taking up trying to keep the stupid machine turned on?" -- well it draws 1.5 megawatts figure it out

https://asc.llnl.gov/computing_resources/bluegenel/configuration.html

"If a deer farts in the woods, does this thing know about it?" -- Umm. no.

"does it work on a wireless network? are they using a token ring network to connect them? what about gigabit Ethernet, or does it use terabit Ethernet? fiber, twisted pair, or coax?" -- it uses gigabit I think someone else can decifer this diagram

https://asc.llnl.gov/computing_resources/bluegenel/ethernet.html

"they sure know how to tell you absolutely nothing about something in a news article." -- try looking things up for yourself some time this took me 10-20 min

[derX @ Nov 13th 2007 11:38AM]

I haven't even begun to look through Coyote's links (for all I know they could be links to, I don't know, Tyra Banks fanclub sites [yeah, VERY random, I know]) but how could you NOT [+] him or her for that hardwork?

[finndo @ Nov 13th 2007 1:46PM]

A plus I did indeed give, that was way overboard!! and by the way, for your 20-30 minutes, it only took me about 5 to read the info, does that mean I need to mail you a check and an I-9?

[Coyote @ Nov 13th 2007 2:24PM]

did you check all the citations there is alot of info on those sites. That is what took the longest finding the answer and condensing it.

also feel free to send as much money as you'd like :)

(repost sorry forgot to hit reply)

[Wwhat @ Nov 13th 2007 4:18PM]

Does it have advanced technology to automatically remove trailing blank lines from posts?

[John @ Nov 13th 2007 5:16PM]

Does anyone know who took the photoof the server?

[gimpbully @ Nov 15th 2007 5:27PM]

I'll pick up a few of these. It runs a stock suse installation on the control node (service node) and front-end nodes (the nodes users actually log in to and submit jobs from). In the actual racks there are two classes of node, IO and compute. IO nodes have a gigabit ethernet connection and run a very small linux. The compute nodes are single threaded w/ 512MB or 1GB (Depending on the customers selection, Livermore has 512M nodes, I believe). These nodes run CNK, it's an insanely small single-threaded OS that does strange linux syscall translations. I hear it should be open sourced rather soon. Other sites (argonne nat'l lab, NCAR) also have wedged other OSs onto the IO nodes and, most recently, the compute nodes (read, different linux kernels). The IO nodes *can* be accessed via ssh for administrative debugging, but only by an administrator from the service node.

[cmh294 @ Nov 13th 2007 11:31AM]

crysis would own these computers lol

[Dom @ Nov 13th 2007 12:37PM]

Satish, thanks for that. [/immense sarcasm] I guess you didn't read my question. Yes, I realise it's a TeraFlop. It's also perfectly reasonable to capitalise FLOPS, as it stands for FLoating Operations Per Second.

I ask the question again: if a single PS3 theoretically pumps out 2 TFLOPS, is it feasible for around 250 PS3s to be linked together and beat this supercomputer?

[Coyote @ Nov 13th 2007 12:47PM]

"is it feasible for around 250 PS3s to be linked together and beat this supercomputer?" -- it is sort of being done already check it out folding @home is now avalible for PS3s

http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/FAQ-PS3.html

[Jotenks @ Nov 13th 2007 1:07PM]

Yes, a cluster of enough PS3's could beat this computer in number of flops.....but only in number. All flops are not created equal. the complexity of calculations those ps3's can handle are very limited due to their architecture. In practice, all of those ps3's would come nowhere near the power of the BlueGene/L.